Strava, the social network for athletes, has published its annual End of Year Insights for 2015.

Comprising of millions of individual runs and rides, the data offers unique insight into the habits and behavior of cyclists and runners in the United States.

The data reveals that in 2015, 5.3 activities were uploaded and shared on the social network every second. This data allows documentation and analysis of Strava’s growth in the world of cycling and running in the United States, while also providing direct comparison with the Strava community on a global scale.

Across Strava’s global platform, cyclists shared a total of 115,788,472 rides in 2015, accruing a total of 2,591,134,087 miles (4,170,026,096 kilometers).

Strava’s cyclists together accumulated 133 billion vertical feet, or over 40 billion meters, in elevation gain in 2015. Globally, Sunday, June 7 was the most popular day for cycling.

Strava cyclists in the U.S. logged 26,320,103 individual rides throughout the year, logging 539,112,239 miles (867,617,047 kilometers) along the way.

Saturday, July 11 proved to be the most popular day for a ride among U.S. cyclists; it also happened to coincide with the second weekend of the Tour de France.

From the hills of Vermont to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, riders in the U.S. climbed 25.6 billion vertical feet, or 7.8 billion meters, in 2015 — 19 percent of the total elevation gain recorded on Strava globally.

For average distance, U.S. men recorded 23 miles (37km) for each ride, while women averaged 20 miles (32km).

Average ride times also differed, as men’s 1 hour, 54 minutes average ride put them in the saddle a bit longer than women, who averaged 1 hour, 38 minutes in comparison. Women recorded an average speed of 12.7 mph (20.4 kph) for an individual ride, with men registering 14.6 mph (23.5 kph).

Louisiana emerged as the fastest state, with an average speed of 15.2 mph (24.5 kph); Florida topped the rankings for longest average ride at 24.2 miles (39km). Vermont residents topped Colorado and California as the most regular climbers, averaging 1,460 vertical feet, or 445 meters, gained per ride.

Strava also revealed that California was the most active state in the U.S., with 7,172,721 rides logged, a considerable margin of difference over its nearest rival, Colorado residents, who totaled 1,465,414 rides. (California also has an estimated 39 million residents, roughly seven times that of Colorado’s 5.5 million.)

Sausalito, California, was home to the most popular segment in the U.S. in 2015, with 15,327 attempts on the “7-11 Bump” segment, near the Golden Gate Bridge.

For many of Strava’s U.S. members, commuting is a large part of their daily routine, with an average of 95,878 rides recorded as commutes to and from work every week. A pacey average of 15.0 mph (24.1 kph) ensured riders made it in on time, tackling an average 10.5 miles, or 16.9km, door-to-door.

“This latest release of Strava’s data demonstrates once again the great depth of insight which is available when collating the activities of the world’s cyclists and runners,” said Andrew Vontz, Strava brand manager. “The Strava story offers us an unprecedented opportunity to analyze and interpret a broad spectrum of data, helping to understand behavior and habits of athletes in the United States; as well as providing real-world feedback on how people utilize their local roads for both exercising and commuting.”

some order of magnitude errors in there I suspect. the statistic “133 billion vertical globally in 2015” by all strava users around the world followed by “riders in the U.S. climbed 25.6 billion vertical feet on July 11” which just is not possible for them both to be accurate

Neal Rogers

You’re right, Steven. That was a misinterpretation of the data. The 25.6 billion figure relates to all U.S. elevation gain in 2015. The story has been fixed to reflect that.

marcus_moore

Neal, I realise that Strava is US based and the article is about riding in the US – but I can’t help reverting to the attached graphic – outside of US, Liberia & Myanmar everyone else uses metric measurements :)

Fair point, Marcus. Will go through and make the metric conversions, and keep that in mind moving forward. Thanks for the input.

MattF

I reckon there needs to be some discussion amongst the editorial team about your approach to metric/imperial measures. The use of imperial measures (feet, miles, pounds etc.) is a bit of a game breaker for me. I cannot be bothered doing the mental conversions whilst reading and consequently switch off. At the very least, on the basis that Cyclingtips is an Australian based website, should it not be written using metric as the default with imperial in brackets. I know this is going to be a real conundrum.

Neal Rogers

No need for it to be a conundrum; we will list both. It will be on the editors to do the conversion for you, as I’ve gone back and done with this piece.

Which is listed first, and which is in brackets, will largely depend on which audience the piece is intended for. In this case, it was directed at the U.S. audience, as that was the dataset that Strava provided.

When it comes to race reporting, it will always be metric first, imperial in brackets, as distance in kilometers is the universal language of bike racing.

Mike

I think not Marcus. The UK, at least for distance purposes, still clings to imperial measurements and all road signs are in miles/yards. And when they say they have just finished a century ride British cyclists don’t mean a mere 100km, which is only the warm-up.

Richard Wagenknecht

Look at the Minneapolis/St. Paul area (where I live). Take that Colorado and California!

Will

June 7 is when Wiggo did the hour record.

jules

cycling is not big in north and south dakota

Durian Rider

Strava and Youtube – The 2 most powerful self development tools on the internet. EVER.

David DuBois

Is this map from 2014? I like the fact that this map picked up what looks like the RAGBRAI race in Iowa, but it looks like the 2014 route, which was a lot further north than the 2015 route.

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